Uncovering modes of evolution: testing for selection versus genetic drift in species diversification
Background: Understanding modes of species evolution is the major questions to the current evolutionary biology. As more DNA data become available, an increasing number of researchers is now switching to phylogeny-based of complex evolutionary models. Therefore, the key challenge now is to develop and test the models which can adequately describe evolution.
Goal: The goal of this project is to develop likelihood optimization of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in R and then use it in phylogenetic comparative analysis to test for signal of directional/divergent selection of Amolops frogs
Mathematical tools: Statistics (stochastic models) and programming. The students will learn how to use R to implement stochastic models and develop optimization procedures of the model parameters
Biological or Medical aspects: This kind of analysis allow to estimate the most probable way of evolution, and permit to answer a lot of question like phenotypic evolution, comparative analysis between species and more other. BM formula: File:BM formule.odt
Supervisors: Anna Kostikova & Nicolas Salamin
Students: Berto Polerà, 3rd years of bachelor in biology.
Presentation:
References: <biblio>
- M A Butler, A A King 2004 "Phylogenetic comparative analysis: A modeling approach for adaptive evolution" American Naturalist: 164(6): 683-695
</biblio>
Back to UNIL BSc course: "Solving Biological Problems that require Math 2011"]
